DESCRIPTION

New Music: New Audiences is 17 nations, 16 national music organisations and 31 ensembles and orchestras cooperating intensively across borders for the purpose of researching and developing new concert forms and new ways of disseminating contemporary music.

The Contemporary Music Centre, with support from Culture Ireland, is delighted to participate, as the lead Irish partner, in this large-scale European project, with Crash Ensemble and the Galway Music Residency / Contempo Quartet as the participating Irish ensembles.

During the project, the 31 ensembles will cooperate in various ‘working groups’ across borders. They will play each other’s repertoires and meet to collaborate on finding new ways to give concerts of new music. The result will be a series of unique concerts all over Europe, beginning in the spring of 2013.

New Music: New Audiences is a project aimed at strengthening the concert experience and defining new concert forms that are in tune with a contemporary audience. Though different in style and size, the ensembles share a devotion to contemporary European art music, and a strong wish to engage a new audience for this music.

Each ensemble will provide a selection of their national repertoire and their knowledge of presenting new music in new settings. As a result, more than 100 contemporary music works will circulate across European borders to reach new audiences. This exchange is a core activity for the ensemble network of New Music: New Audiences and ensures that the music of the concerts is among the best new music in Europe.

FURTHER INFORMATION

TESTIMONIAL

The Contemporary Music Centre, Crash Ensemble and Galway Music Residency / Contempo Quartet represent Irish new music in this Europe-wide intiative. This offers us the unique and invaluable opportunity to learn and share our expertise with our peers in the new music sector across Europe. The conferences and workshops have been motivating and inspirational, yet also offered incredible practical advice and examples of how together we can grow audiences for contemporary music in our home countries. This peer learning stimulates interesting and challenging debate on audience needs and performers’ aspirations. The repertoire exchange which forms a central raison d’être of the network is a unique opportunity to export Irish works and raise the profile of Irish composers. There are limited opportunities to achieve this. It is for this reason that the network is essential to the dissemination of quality new music across European borders.

IRISH ORGANISATION PROFILE

The Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) is the national archive of scores and recordings of works by Irish composers. The public library provides access to scores on a daily basis, including scores for performance. The archive (physical and digital) plays a unique role in the musical heritage of the island.

Audience development and support for the continuing professional development of composers and performers of contemporary music are also at the heart of CMC’s work.

CMC meets the needs of a variety of interest groups: composers, performers, musicologists, teachers and students; and reaches a wide range of audiences: music enthusiasts, other artforms, children and young people, and the general public.